


we'll have the same dream

by clarinets (clarineta)



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Karedevil Secret Santa 2018, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 09:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17241596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarineta/pseuds/clarinets
Summary: "And it was nice outside, a nice winter evening, and when he suggested a walk instead of a cab, she didn’t say no. He held his hand against the small of her back as they got out into the street, always finding little ways to touch her, hold her arm, touch her shoulder. She would never complain."Karen and Matt take a long late night Christmas walk.





	we'll have the same dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eva_Swan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva_Swan/gifts).



> Here it is, care-devil/Eva_Swan, on the very last day, your secret santa gift! Fluff is not my specialty, but I tried to give you something soft and Christmas-y. Hope you enjoy and happy holidays!
> 
> Now to everyone: this is my first attempting at writing for these characters. I think these two were on the way back, on the road to each other again when we left them, but I do think it would have taken a while, and a lot of work, a lot of change. Good change! So this fic is my way of pushing them in that direction. They have a journey ahead and I wanted to leave them there.
> 
> Title comes from Sharon Van Etten's "Same Dream". This fic was written and rewritten and edited to her 2010 album Because I Was In Love.

Christmas with the Nelsons had been surprisingly good. Not that she had expected it to be _bad_ , in a catastrophic way, but her preferred way of spending Christmas had been, for a while now, in the company of beer, whiskey, and Chinese, and that had been going on for long enough that it was already a time-honored tradition in her book. She was used to being alone, too alone, and that’s one habit you don’t just get rid of right away, ripping off the band-aid. You get used to it, the loneliness, your mind adjusts to the new normal. It becomes hard to have other people around, letting them in, when most of your conversations happen inside your own head. You need to relearn sharing things out loud. But when Foggy invited them over, she couldn’t have said no, because they had been through a lot of bullshit in this bullshit year and had finally found their way back to each other, and she had friends again, friends to see every day and friends to text! Whenever she wanted! Real friends. And that was cause for celebration, so fuck it, celebrate it she would, surrounded by Foggy’s huge Irish family and Foggy’s fiancée and, yeah, Matt. Matt, who wasn’t a conversation she was really ready to have even with herself.

 

Matt, who was now walking by her side, on this late late night, on Christmas day. She had announced it was her time to head back home, she’d had so much to eat and so much to drink and had cases to work on, “oh but it’s Christmas, who works on Christmas day!” “Karen works on Christmas _night_ ,” that one coming from Foggy. After saying goodbye to so many Nelsons she lost count, she’d finally gotten out, only to find Matt standing by her side. He couldn’t let her go home by herself, he said. And it was nice outside, a nice winter evening, and when he suggested a walk instead of a cab, she didn’t say no. He held his hand against the small of her back as they got out into the street, always finding little ways to touch her, hold her arm, touch her shoulder. She would never complain, but it was confusing, as everything had been confusing since they’d gotten Matt back.

 

It was still not easy to believe, that they had him. But he had come back, and he was Matt. For the first time, really, he was Matt. Long ago he was the heroic lawyer who swooped in and saved her, the man who believed in the law, the one she had up on a pedestal. He was _good_ , he was _brave_ , he was _upstanding_ , he believed so strongly in what he did. She wanted him to think she was good too, one of his kind, more than anything. If someone like him could see her as good, maybe she could see that in herself. Yeah, that didn’t work. First, because he turned out to be a cheating alcoholic, or so she thought at the time. But more importantly, no matter how good he believed she was — and even after the terrible finale to whatever it was they had had together, he still believed that —, it wouldn’t change the truth, her truth. And then, of course, he was Daredevil, then he was the man who saved her life, twice, the man who went around the city wearing horns and breaking laws for the greater good, and she wanted to tell him she understood, she got it, she respected it, but she couldn’t overcome whatever barrier he had built, couldn’t overcome his ex-girlfriend baggage, and she couldn’t open up herself.

 

Now, after so many impossible things, they were here walking together on this Christmas evening, arm in arm. The silence is comfortable. The warmth they get from each other. But this silence has gone on for months. Not that they can’t talk, but that they can, except about anything that really addresses their issues. The issue of whatever they had before. As Karen saw it, they were two people who thought they knew each other, and they didn’t, and they jumped into something too fast, and it blew up in their faces, and Foggy’s face, too fast, and then they were all apart, gone on their separate ways, Foggy with his rich clients, helping millionaires get away with murder, Karen with the newspaper, and her gun, her useless gun. Matt… being Matt. Catholic. Attracted to violence. Not over his ex. Not over his dead ex. Not over his resurrected ex. Is it really worth it, bringing all that back to the forefront, when they’re friends now, the three of them? Dig up the past when it could stay buried. She was just happy to have him. And yeah, he would smile at her differently, like he was still seeing the Karen he had always saw, but better. Like finding out about her darkest secrets had made him feel closer to her. A new understanding. She’d catch it sometimes, his smile, his fond smile, and again, his touches, and a sudden openness to conversation, to sharing stories. There were forbidden topics. It was hard to tell who exactly drew those lines. She couldn’t tell if Matt didn’t want to talk about Elektra or if it was her who didn’t want to hear it. But he asked about her family, too, and she tried to say as much as she could. It wasn’t much, yet, but maybe one day. Or maybe not. She doesn’t know if she wants to tell him about those ten years between leaving Fagan Corners and ending up at Union Allied. Everything she has told him he has taken so well, it is terrifying. She is waiting for that balloon to pop.

 

But right now, they walk around the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, safe for the moment, or as safe as they get, and the air is cold but not uncomfortably so, and his arm is on hers not because he needs her guidance but just because he wants to feel that a part of him is touching a part of her. The silence is still comfortable, both taking in the weather, taking in each other, but the weight of so many things unsaid stays with her. They’re friends now. She’s gotten one of her best friends back. All of her best friends. Why complicate it with something that never works and could never work.  _This_ works, doesn’t it? The smiles, the soft flirting, the warmth deep inside her when he looks at her like she’s something beautiful, even though he knows, he ought to know, that it’s far from her truth.

 

They’ve been walking for a long time, she notices. Taking the long way and then taking a detour from the long way to an even longer way. The comfortable silence suddenly turns deafening. There’s a current between them, all the things that were never said charging the air between them, creating electricity where their arms touch. She can tell he feels the same, that something needs to come out. Two years ago, she would have been terrified that he had somehow read right through her, guessed everything about her, finally saw her for what she really is. A year ago, they would have just carried on, trying to ignore that underlying feeling that there was something wrong, trying to pretend she was nice and innocent Karen Page falling in love with one-of-the-good-ones, a lawyer who defends vulnerable people and doesn’t even care about payment. But it’s not two years ago, and it’s not a year ago, and they spent hours locked in a church basement and he knows her and she knows him. Sometimes comfortable silence is overrated. Maybe she should take the lead. Ask a question. Say something, anything. Every instinct in her body went up against the idea. She was alone. She had long ago unlearned the art of honest and direct conversations. It was different when people were trying to kill you in a church, different from just walking down the wintery streets of a very late Christmas night. Was it still even Christmas? Maybe midnight had come and gone already. Maybe—

 

“I have something for you,” Matt said. The way he said it made her feel like he had just been debating with himself, like she was. He said it out loud but it was an extension of whatever he had been thinking, only this time, unlike her, he actually used his words and put something out there, between them.

 

“Something for me? How mysterious, Mr. Murdock.”

 

“Well, it is Christmas. Well, technically not anymore, but. Close enough.”

 

“ _You_ got me a Christmas gift?”

 

“Ouch. Is that what you think of me? Should I assume you got nothing for me?” He says, in his mock hurt voice that makes her giggle in spite of herself, goddammit.

 

“Hm, I have, actually. I just don’t have it with me. I don’t know, I just didn’t want to do it in front of the entire Nelson clan.”

 

“So it’s a private gift? Not fit to be opened in the presence of children? I’m shocked, Miss Page.”

 

“Oh, and what about this gift of yours? Should I open it in secret? Is it the kind of gift you gotta lock yourself in a bathroom to unwrap?” Oh. She blamed the alcohol for that one. She blamed the alcohol for a lot of things in this new phase in their relationship, to stop herself from thinking it through. Drunk people flirt. Drunk people make sex toy innuendos. Drunk people enjoy the attention of their handsome friends they used to have feelings for back when having those feelings wasn’t complicated. Drunk people can pretend they’re not self-aware and don’t know exactly what they’re doing. There are no consequences. And if she isn’t really drunk, not at all, who is to say. Plausible deniability. She did work with lawyers.

 

“Actually…” he paused for a moment, looking almost unsure, as though braving new territory, as though taking a big step he wasn’t sure he should take, “would you mind sitting on a bench somewhere? It really is unexpectedly good weather outside and I thought we could… sit, for a while.” He was looking down, facing some point on the ground instead of her, sounding uncertain, maybe even insecure. “I would just like to… talk, I guess.” At her low chuckle, which he followed up with one of his own, he added: “New Year, right? Who knows. Maybe I’ll take up having conversations with the people closest to me. I’ve seen stranger things.” She laughed.

 

“I’m not sure if ninjas, even immortal ones, rank as stranger than Matt Murdock asking to have a conversation with me.” He laughed, too, chagrined. “But I never did see those ninjas, and I really want to know what my present is, so I guess I can give you a chance.”

 

They found a bench in a small park somewhere. It was Christmas — technically Boxing Day —, but also she had Daredevil by her side, as far as she knew everyone who wanted her dead was in prison at the moment, and she felt completely safe as they sat down, as their legs touched, as they stared up at the sky for a few beats, finding another form of silence. The silence of expectation. Again, it wasn’t unpleasant.

 

“So,” he finally moved, reaching inside his jacket for something, “I didn’t want to give this to you with all those eyes watching. Don’t get too excited, you know exactly how much money I’m making, but you know.” He handed the package to her, a rectangular flat package wrapped in red wrapping paper with Christmas trees, little Santas, and baby Jesus all over it. Laughing, she carefully unwrapped it, to find a picture frame inside. It was a picture of the two of them plus Foggy on their first day as Nelson, Murdock & Page, when the sign was ready, the three of them holding it. They looked exhausted and sleep deprived but happy. Accomplished, even.

 

“I thought of giving you a book, but you have so many of those and I couldn’t tell what you wouldn’t have read already. Then I realized, you keep that one picture from St. Patrick’s day. And I thought it was time you had a new one. A new picture for a new era.”

 

She lost herself in thoughts for a moment, staring at the framed picture. “Thanks, Matt. I love it.” She looked up at him and there he was. Looking at her that same way. The same fond smile. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, took them off as soon as they sat down, and she remembered a time when he would put them on for her, in her presence, and now, looking at them, she understood why. It made her feel closer to him. Had he been afraid she’d somehow know, just by looking into his eyes, everything he was hiding? Was he okay with her knowing everything now?

 

“I really missed it, you know? The three of us. I know Foggy is our biggest cheerleader but. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about me but I… I don’t really have many friends. It’s really just you guys. Well, that and…”

 

“Frank Castle?”

 

“I don’t know if I’d call him a friend.” At Matt’s raised eyebrow, she felt the need to clarify: “He’s just not someone you count on, for every day. For happy hour drinks at Josie’s. It’s… different.” She could see he was still waiting for more. She wasn’t sure she could give him more. She felt it didn’t really matter. Not that Frank didn’t matter, to her, but as far as her and Matt went, it wasn’t the person of Frank Castle who mattered. It was how she saw herself. It was waiting for his hey-wait-a-minute-there moment. Matt had been to hell and had gotten his life back and in the relief of all that, maybe he just hadn’t had the time to truly process what she told him. “Your mistakes don’t need to define you,” “you’re definitely ahead on that score,” but what if one day he really thought about it, really saw _her_. Realized that, at the end of the day, he hadn’t killed Wilson Fisk. And if someone deserves to be killed, Wilson Fisk would be it, but Matt, he had resisted that impulse. Any day now he would wake up and realize that she had shot a man seven times because she wanted him dead. He would realize that her own brother was dead because of her. Nothing he had done compared to that. At the end of the day, he didn’t let the worst parts of him take over. At the end of the day, she was the young girl who fell into drugs and got her brother killed and destroyed her father and tried to find a normal life and kept running into trouble, like she deserved to, who fell into drugs again, who decided to isolate herself from everything and everyone and ended up at Union Allied, watching as people died all around her over and over again while she somehow stayed alive.

 

“Conversations work better when you say the words out loud, you know?” And he gently poked her arm, before caressing it gently. It brought her back. “Did you learn that at church?” She asked, not ready to tell him she thought she was a curse on everyone around her, shouldn’t have stayed alive this long. “Yes, actually. That is how confession works. You say the words.”

 

“Oh so am I confessing to you, Father Murdock?” He chuckles.

 

“I thought I’d be confessing to you. But neither of us is an appointed servant of God so. Guess the order doesn’t really matter.”

 

She stopped to look at him, then. His face looked lighter. Slightly red from the cold, but in a good way. She trusts him, she knows. As much as she can trust anyone.

 

“You know. I still wait for that other shoe to drop with you. I wait for you to realize one day that I’m not the person you think I am. That’s why it was… easier, I think, with Frank. He couldn’t judge me. And I think… I know this isn’t a comfortable topic and you can cut me off at any moment here but I think it was the same for you and… her. Elektra?” She watches for his reaction to that name, but finds none. He’s staring straight ahead now. Still listening, though. “You didn’t have to hide anything from her. Not that I didn’t hide things from Frank. Not that anything ever happened with Frank, I mean, it’s not like that, I’m not comparing those two situations, what I’m saying, what I’m trying to say, is that I wanted you to think of me like you already thought of me, and maybe you felt the same way. About me, and how I thought of you.”

 

He didn’t say anything, so she decided to follow the impulse, to talk, to finally get words out loud. _A word is dead when it is said, some say._ She was always desperate to get every word out there, always a believer in _it just begins to live that day_ , but never when it came to her own words. She had learned to lie and felt it suited her. It is easier to not be known. But as terrifying as it was, she wanted Matt to know her. She maybe needed him to. She didn’t want to stop and analyze if she wanted that because she believed it would push him away and free her from whatever it is that crackles between them, or if it was that hope, that tiny moth fluttering inside her, struggling to stay alive, thinking that he would look at her, truly know her, and love her. She still doesn’t know what kind of love she wants from him. But she can admit here, in the early hours of December 26th, that she wants it.

 

So she told him. Not everything. Conversations don’t work like that, especially when you’re not used to them. You can’t go from zero to all. She tells him that on that night, when her brother died, when she got into the driving seat of the car high and drunk and angry, that Kevin had been badly beaten, that he couldn’t have driven himself, but she also says that it was her fault he had taken that beating in the first place. She doesn’t mention Georgetown or karencakes or lottery tickets but she mentions a boyfriend, she mentions a gun. A father who will never want to see her again and she can’t blame him. She mentions relapses, she mentions attempts at normal relationships, staying away from trouble while always looking for trouble.

 

She mentions having never met someone like him before he and Foggy showed up out of nowhere that night, forever ago. How heroic he was in her eyes.That’s when he interrupts her, when he looks at her, not *at* her, but she knows that’s what he’s doing anyway. He holds her hands and takes off one of her gloves and one of his so they can feel each other, and runs his thumb in circles, softly, so gently she could cry. He’s still quiet, though.

 

“You were the one who wanted to talk, and here I am, rambling,” she says, trying to sound light even though her heart is crushing on itself, curling up on itself, even though it feels like the slightest movement could make her disappear, vanish, cease to exist. He laughs, that small one, not the sarcastic Matt laugh, not the genuinely happy Matt laugh, the sad Matt laugh.

 

“You were right. Back at the church. I did think of you as innocent. I… I put unfair expectations on you based on who I wanted you to be. I wanted you to be the opposite of... someone else. The complete opposite of her. It wasn’t fair. On either of you.” Karen pauses, and it’s her time to look ahead, because now that he’s saying this she suddenly doesn’t want to hear about it, doesn’t want to hear about the woman she never got a chance to meet, the woman who died twice. It’s going to unbury resentments. It’s going to bring her back to those nights after he told her he was Daredevil and she was awake thinking, maybe he wasn’t an alcoholic but he was still a cheater, right? And she didn’t know, didn’t know what was fair, didn’t know who intruded on what, and it really would be better to leave all that in the past and just let things be as they are, with her and Foggy and Matt working from a meat shop, making no money, drinking cheap again, playing pool now that she knows Matt actually can play. It’s supposed to be the three of them, and when Foggy’s wedding day finally comes around Matt will be the best man and she’ll be the backup best man because you cannot rely on Matt Murdock to fulfill best man duties, and at the party they’ll dance, the two of them, and she’ll rest her head next to his neck, right where it smells really good, and, and—

 

“Are you listening to me?” Matt asks, his eyes almost on hers.

 

“Yes. Yes, I’m listening.”

 

She knows he’s not telling her everything, every detail, and she doesn’t want it. They met, had a whirlwind romance, there was a mentor of sorts, there was a hand and a chaste and dragon bones and, okay, she lost track of it a bit, because really, it didn’t make sense, but the point was that—

 

“You’re right. You reminded me of the man I wanted to be and that didn’t work. I wasn’t ready. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I’m not very good at moderation,” and he looked at her, with that self-deprecating smile, and she smiled back, because yes. “I thought I had to either be Matt Murdock, for you and Foggy, or Daredevil, for her, and I thought Daredevil was who I truly was. So I fucked up, Karen. I never apologized for that, not really, and you deserve an apology.”

 

She smiled at him, and he smiled back. They were still holding hands, now both hands on his lap, and their legs touched as they huddled together for warmth.

 

“But thanks to so many people, to Father Lantom, to my… to Sister Maggie, to Foggy. To you…,” and he pauses for a chuckle, “God, thanks to Ray Nadeem… Do you know what he told me, when we were on the way to court that day?” She shook her head. “He told me I already had it all. That I had it both ways. It took a near stranger to look at me, and look at you and Foggy and tell me that you guys were there, and you knew what I do, and I’d spent months letting you think I was dead and both of you were still there.”

 

“I told you we would never going to leave you…”

 

“No, I know. But I didn’t… at the same time I didn’t really know. I may never have killed anyone but I’ve wanted to. So many times. And you. Karen, there’s no shoe to drop. Everything you went through made you into this person. Everything I went through was exactly what I needed to go through. What we both went through led us to be here, sitting down on this bench in the very late night or maybe early morning, the day after Christmas. I guess what I wanted to say, and god. Okay. No one in the world knows me better than you do.”

 

She holds his hand tighter. She’s trying to say that’s true for her, too. She’s trying to say things she’s not ready to say, doesn’t know if she’ll ever be ready to say. _It’s a swirl, it’s a lot of things, ingredients_ , she had said late at night in a cafe, maybe centuries ago. Before Daredevil, before Midland Circle, before a church basement, before he stared at her like she was special and precious even after he had all the information he needed to know that was not the case, could not be the case, that she was rotten. But he’s looking at her like that now. Is he waiting for her? For a moment she thinks that’s it. He broke her heart and now he’s waiting because the first move has to be hers. But girlfriends come back from the dead and they can do it again. Here they are in this park bench as two people who have grown so used to lying and insincerity that it’s their first impulse in any situation.

 

He lifts up his hand to touch her cheek. His hand is cold but she leans into it anyway. His other hand goes into her hair, moving through it, softly caressing. Her eyes close and she sighs. They’re not ready for this. There is a lot of ground to cover before they can even think of being ready for this again. She rests her forehead against his and their noses bump gently, smoothly. He smells good, like always. He’s Matt, and she knows him. Maybe one day she’ll finally believe he knows her too, and accepts her. His hand on her cheek moves down to her jaw and holds her face towards his. It feels like he can see her eyes and everything written in them, even though she knows he can’t. He can hear her heartbeat, though, and he can smell whatever is going on in her skin, just underneath her skin, so maybe he can see.

 

“I’m sorry the timing wasn’t exactly the best.”

 

“Maybe. Maybe let’s just… see where it goes this time. Let’s see how long you can stay. Let’s see how long we can stay honest. I’m not… I’m not in a hurry. Are you?”

 

He laughs again, a happy laugh that also says something else, that he may be in a hurry. That he may really want her. But what he says is that yeah, he can wait. They can both wait here, in the cold, outside, so she kisses his cheek, close to his lips but not close enough that she’d fall to temptation, and she kisses his temple, and she kisses his forehead, and then snuggles into his arms to rest her head on his shoulder.

 

“Hm. I think this would be more comfortable with a shoulder pillow. It’s all muscle here.” He laughs, the happy laugh, the contented laugh, and she smiles like she hasn’t in a while, she’s not gonna try to remember how long. They stay like that even though it’s definitely just December 26th now and it won’t be Christmas again for 365 days, even though it’s winter in New York, and he buries his nose in her hair before resting his head against hers, both of them holding hands and trying to find a way to be as close to each other as possible, not wearing gloves. It’s going to be a while before the sun rises, she can see, but still the thought of just going home makes her feel sad, a little bit. Like she could fast-forward to maybe a year or so later and then he’d just come back to her place, or she’d go to his, and it’d be natural, something they’d be doing every day, and he’d leave at night to fight crime as a lawless vigilante and she’d stay up, working on a case on her computer, till he got back and she’d help him with any wounds and maybe he’d even tell her what he’d been out doing, and maybe she’d tell him what she was working on. A year ago she’d never have thought she’d be here with him and he’d know all the things she swore to herself no one would ever know, so maybe in that future, at the end of that year, or maybe those two, three years, they would both have learned to instinctively tell each other the truth. That future doesn’t seem as far fetched from here, from this park bench, hours away from sunrise.

 

Matt moves to get up, and she sighs, because yes, it’s time. Maybe they won’t remember this conversation later. Maybe she’s drunker than she feels, maybe he is too. Maybe it will be like this never happened. Matt takes a deep breath and breaks their embrace and stands up.

 

“I was thinking. Are you in a hurry to get back to your computer? Because before I finally get whatever mysterious and godless present you have for me, I bet we could get some late night breakfast somewhere, and I was thinking pancakes. Maybe bacon. A lot of syrup.”

 

She can’t help but laugh, but smile, but feel everything all at once. “So basically we’re thinking hangover breakfast, except without the hangover?”

 

“I told you, Karen Page. You know me better than anyone.”

 

He took her hand again, and she held onto his, and they went to look for breakfast.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to crushsong, my sister in Marvel's Daredevil, and Titi for reading this first and trying to sort out my timeline and my lack of understanding of how quotes and punctuation work.
> 
> Karen quotes Emily Dickinson in her thoughts, because Karen loves Emily Dickinson: https://www.bartleby.com/113/1089.html
> 
> Sorry they did't kiss, everyone.


End file.
